Three people have been arrested in connection with the case of the theft of seven paintings from a museum in the Netherlands, the police in Rotterdam announced Tuesday.
The paintings have not been recovered. Estimates of the value of the paintings, which include works by Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin and Lucian Freud, have varied, with some art experts speculating that they could be worth as much as 100 million euros. The museum, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, has not disclosed their value.
The three men were arrested in Romania in an unrelated criminal investigation involving art, said Roland Ekkers, a spokesman for the Rotterdam police.
“They are arrested in Romania for a Romanian matter, but obviously we have questions for those three as well,†said Mr. Ekkers.
On Wednesday morning the Rotterdam police were determining whether they would send detectives to Romania to question the suspects, according to Mr. Ekkers.
The heist was carried out on Oct. 16 at about 3:15 a.m., when the thieves entered the Kunsthal through a fire escape door. Surveillance footage shows the thieves were inside the museum for no more than two minutes.
A surveillance tape showing the robbers entering and leaving the museum was released by the police in October:
In the absence of news following the heist, the Dutch press theorized that the robbers were part of an Irish crime ring, or that the burglary was hastily planned by underworld figures to repay debts after a major drug shipment was intercept! ed in Antwerp last fall.
The stolen art had been on loan to the Kunsthal from the Triton Foundation, a private foundation of the family of the late Willem Cordia, a Dutch investor and collector.
The investigation of the robbery is far from over, said Mr. Ekkers.
“Their arrest has not cracked the case,†he said.
